


gravely sing our runaway song

by livtontea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, No Incest, Pre-Canon, ben is not equipped to deal with this, mildly descriptive gore, neither is klaus, no beta we die like ben, they break into a graveyard, tomfoolery, tuapocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23304697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: "This is a bad idea.""That's what you say about all of my ideas.""Well, I really mean it this time."
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 22
Kudos: 58





	gravely sing our runaway song

**Author's Note:**

> first day of TUApocalypse! nice
> 
> i didn't even read this a second time so im prematurely sorry for any errors! i took some liberty in how ghosts work, but that's okay because my takes are very hot and cool, obviously (god i wish)

"This is a bad idea."

"That's what you say about _all_ of my ideas." Klaus has his tongue sticking out of his mouth, for once focused on a specific task. A very specific, very _illegal_ task. He jiggles the bobby pin in the padlock until he hears a click.

"Well, I really mean it this time."

"You always say _that,_ too." The lock pops open. Klaus softly whoops, not too keen on drawing attention to himself. Ben crosses his arms and frowns. Klaus reaches out to press his fingers against the wrinkle between Ben's eyebrows. His hand passes clean through Ben's head, and they both shiver. "You'll get wrinkles," he mumbles.

"I'm dead," says Ben. "I _can't_ get wrinkles."

"Whatever."

Klaus pushes the heavy gate open. It creaks, loud and shrill, and the brothers tense expectantly. Nobody comes running. Klaus sighs in relief—Ben's frown grows deeper.

"You really shouldn't be here."

"Uh-huh." Klaus shakes himself out, flaps his hands, takes a deep breath. His worn (and stolen) sneaker toes the line between the street and the inside of the graveyard.

"It's dangerous. You know this."

"Yep." He clenches his fists.

" _Klaus._ Why are you even doing this?"

"Oh, Benny, you know why."

He steps inside the graveyard. Instantly, it's silent. Like the air has grown thicker around him (them—Ben, of course, is right beside him, muttering something along the lines of _don't call me Benny_ ) and now it wants to swallow him whole. Klaus gulps.

"It's not too late to turn back, you know."

Klaus sighs, deep and heavy, and so, so _tired._ He turns his eyes to Ben. "Ben… It was too late a long fucking while ago."

He shivers as they walk deeper into the abandoned graveyard. The scenery around them is straight out of an old movie—all _Addams Family_ mixed with _Dracula,_ dark and… crumbling.

Klaus can feel all the ghosts beneath them. They've not shown up yet—still hidden away beneath the dirt, beneath the wood of their coffins. There are vines curling around gravestones that are half-gone—crumbled into dust under the ruthless touches of time. This place is old, and filled with the dead, and Klaus is heading right for the middle of it.

"Dude, seriously. This place is giving me the creeps."

"What's it to you? You can't get hurt. You're dead."

"Thanks." Ben wrinkles his nose. "It feels…" he trails off. "Sour."

"Sour? What the fuck does that mean?"

"I don't know, okay? It's just… it feels packed here. Sour. Bitter. Like a bruise."

Klaus shakes his head and laughs, once, without any real humor. "You're not making any sense."

"I'm not the one who broke into a graveyard."

"Touche."

They keep walking. There are dead leaves on the ground surrounding a barren tree. It's old and craggy, bending its arms over a rusted bench. Klaus stops in front of it. Just to the side, there's a little mound with a crooked slab sticking out, looking like it's about to fall over. He brushes his hand over it—the words engraved and fading feel like ice against his fingers—and just as quickly snatches his hands away.

The wind blows through the branches.

"This must be the place," he says, so sure of himself even in the face of what he's going to do.

Ben looks pale. Ghastly pale, like even the barest hints of life that were left in him have been blown away by the biting wind. His eyes are dark against his face. He squats down and squints at the blocky lettering.

"Ben."

"Hm?" He doesn't tear his eyes away from the gravestone. His hand drifts to hover over it.

_"Ben."_

Ben snatches his hand away. _"What?"_

"You're flickering."

Sure enough, Ben is glitching in and out of focus. He raises his hands to his face, and his eyes widen as he takes in how dark the fabric of his jacket is against his skin. It's almost completely black against the pale, pale, pale skin. His hands blur in front of his eyes. He abruptly straightens out and shakes out his hands, once, twice, until he thinks they're more or less… together.

 _"Fuck,"_ he swears. "Can you hurry up? I told you it felt sour."

"Ugh, yeah, yeah, I'm getting to it."

Klaus' eyes roam the, frankly, depressing scenery. "This place is haunted as fuck."

"No shit," snaps Ben. "It's a goddamn graveyard. An old, abandoned, haunted fucking graveyard—do you know what they would say if they knew what we— _you_ —were doing? _Shit,_ Klaus, this is so illegal."

"How is it illegal, brother dear? I'm just… on a little stroll."

"Yeah, after you _broke into a graveyard._ You're trespassing, probably."

"Oh, shut up. Look, I'm being perfectly discreet. Hiding what we're doing is going great."

"What _you're_ doing. I'm not a part of this."

Klaus raises his eyebrows with a smirk. "You're an accomplice."

"Look, just—just get it done so we can go, alright? I'm fucking freezing."

"You can't get cold." He reaches out to touch the gravestone again—places his hand on the top, like a weight, pushing down on the rock. He can hear—feel—ghosts beginning to rouse behind them in the path they'd walked.

"Yeah," Ben says. "That's why something is wrong."

Klaus bites his lip and reaches deeper into the soil. Not literally—but he stretches out what feels like a tendril of his mind, a feeler looking for—

A screamer breaks out from beneath the stone. It's so disfigured, Klaus can barely tell what it used to be—screaming and screaming, draped in… _oh gross,_ he doesn't want to think about that, a mass of swirling ghostly white, a hurricane of _noise_ and _his fucking name._

Klaus screams. He's not alone. As soon as the phantom emerges, like a firework, all sudden and _loud_ , both of the brothers scream and turn. Klaus scrambles to get back onto his feet, and Ben is right behind him, running, running back the way they came.

Klaus slams into phantoms, into old women and young children missing body parts, dodging elbows and chests and whatever the hell.

He shrieks again when something frigid touches his hand.

"Sorry!" shouts Ben. "I'm sorry, I just—sorry!"

"AAAAA!" says Klaus.

They run out the gate, Klaus unceremoniously slamming it shut behind him, Ben hissing in surprise when he slams through the metal bars. Klaus darts to the side, running down the street to some alley where the dark envelops him. Ben follows and disrupts the looming darkness—he's glowing, because of course he is.

"Turn the light down!" hisses Klaus.

"I don't fucking know how!" Ben hisses back. He shakes his wrists again and suddenly it's pitch black again. "Oh. Okay. Cool."

"Since when are you a _nightlight_?"

"I don't know! It was a high-stress situation, okay? Maybe it's like, an adrenaline thing."

"You're dead! You don't _have_ adrenaline!"

"Fuck, I don't know, okay? Just leave it, it's not like it matters. Did you at least get what you wanted?"

Klaus opens his mouth to retort and freezes. He blinks. His hand, which had been poised to jab at ben with one finger, falls to his side as his other hand scrapes his hair back from his face. "Oh, _shit_." His groan echoes down the narrow alley.

"Are you for real?"

_"Fuck!"_

"You're _joking,_ right? This is a joke? Klaus, tell me we didn't break into a creepy haunted graveyard for _nothing._ "

Klaus presses his hands to his face and sinks to the floor, back dragging against the brick wall.

"Of course. Wow. I can't believe you." Ben laughs—slightly hysterical.

"It was terrifying, okay?"

"Yeah, no _shit,_ genius! Now you're not even—" Ben stops. "...What were we doing this for, again?"

"...You know Andy?"

"Of course this has to do with Andy."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, shut up. He promised he'd pay me to talk to his… I don't know, ancestor? Something about inheritance and whatever, I don't know, I was really high."

_"Because of course you were."_

"Oh shut up! You screamed like a little girl!"

"So did you!"

Klaus lets out a chuckle. "I guess we're even then."

"Sure. Let's just—let's never do that again."

"Oh, definitely not. Never. Fuck graveyards."

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @seven-misfits :) (or better yet, leave a comment and lmk your thoughts on this!)
> 
> YES the title is a bad pun. it took me a whopping 4 minutes to come up with it, which is at least twice the effort i usually put into my titles.


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